


Complacent

by elizabeth_the_queen



Category: American Idiot - Green Day/Armstrong, Green Day
Genre: Controlling Society, F/M, resistance groups
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 11:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10513149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizabeth_the_queen/pseuds/elizabeth_the_queen
Summary: Madison Buddington isn't old enough to remember what the world was like before the Society took hold. She is old enough to remember her brother's funeral after he ran off with American Idiot, a underground rebel group notorious for its swift and sudden resistance attacks that leave hundreds dead and wounded in its wake. The Society has one rule above all others: Normalcy is accepted. Placidity is preferred.Madison likes her job. She likes her quiet apartment life. She likes the Society's benevolent guidance in her life.Abrupt change is rarely painless.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written in a long time, and I've never posted on here before. However, a certain album from 2004 sparked my interest again, and I couldn't get this idea off of my brain. I have no idea where it'll go -or even if it'll stay with me to completion- but I figured it's worth a shot here.

The clock on the wall struck twelve and the phone on her desk rang.

Madison picked it up and smoothed a stray piece of her hair behind her fingers. “Yes, Mr. Wright?”

“I’m going to lunch,” came the gruff reply. “Hold my calls until I return.” Papers were being shuffled in the background. No doubt Mr. Wright was irritated by the intrusion of lunchtime.

“Yes, Mr. Wright.”

“Thank you, Ms. Buddington.” He was scurrying out of his office before she’d even set the phone down to its cradle. She offered his retreating back a placid smile, and returned to the issue at hand, namely deciphering a memo he’d asked her to review. Silence returned to the small waiting area, broken only by the sound of her keyboard. After some time, she sat up a little straighter in her chair and turned toward her personal printer, which had just spluttered to life with her memo. Madison snagged it and added it to decently thick stack of paper before stapling the pack together and setting it neatly in a box marked for completed work. 

The clock on the wall struck twelve-thirty, and the elevator doors slid open soundlessly, returning a still-slightly frazzled Mr. Wright. He stopped short at her desk to pick up the newly printed memo and properly look at her.

"Any calls?"

"None, sir."

"Emails?"

"None, sir."

He eyed the memo somewhat apprehensively. "Is this it in its entirely?"

"Yes, sir."  

"Very well. Take your lunch, Ms. Buddington." He swept into his office. 

Madison gathered her purse together, slipping a chapstick back into it. She shrugged into her lightweight coat and turned the answering machine on. Mr. Wright hated the necessity of phone calls when she wasn't there to field them. The elevator ride was silent, and the security guard at the bottom nodded curtly at her when she exited the building and headed towards her favorite Thai restaurant, passing the traditional southern food shop with some measure of internalized disgust. Years ago, before Society had taken the reigns of the free world, there were multiple shops of one similar food product on the same streets. She faintly recalled the look of awe in her brother's eyes when he talked about it. 

 _"So many restaurants you didn't know WHERE to eat!"_  John had said, giddy with excitement.  _"And everyone had a favorite, and it was okay to have a favorite!"_

Madison clenched her teeth together. She didn't have time to dwell on the past. Mr. Wright expected her to be back promptly. 

Laughter startled her out of her thoughts. It was coming from an alley she was about to pass, so she slowed down slightly in confusion of the nature of the laugh. It was wild and uncontrolled; it was perverse and that was stunningly jarring out in public. She was drawing closer, so she could hear the urgent whispers of another man underneath the laughter. He was begging the laughing person to stop, or quiet down. His soft voice rose in intensity until he was shouting slurs and swears at the laughing person. Madison was frozen halfway through her step. 

The laughter had finally attracted the attention of a couple of Society Peacekeepers, whose faceless visors betrayed no emotion as they stalked towards the sound. She relaxed somewhat as they passed her, but the tension shot through her shoulders again when the second voice began to scream for the laughing person to run. The Peacekeepers dragged them both out into the street in front of her. The laughing person was a young woman never stopped or slowed her hysterical laughter, and her companion was a grimy looking older man who was now openly weeping and begging for mercy. The woman couldn't have been older than twenty.

Madison turned around to head back to the office, appetite remarkably gone. Her quick strides took her far, but not far enough to hear the echoing shot and the laughter abruptly cut off.

The only indication Mr. Wright had left his office since her departure were two manila folders placed neatly on her desk. Madison set her purse down, smoothed that stray hair behind her ear, and opened the first folder to be greeted by the cheery face of the laughing girl from moments earlier. Bile churned in her stomach and she flipped it shut with a soft gasp. 

It wasn’t shocking Mr. Wright already knew about the incident and was directing her to write a report. Part of her job as his secretary was to document incidents that interrupted life during the Society’s control. It technically fell under Mr. Wright’s subdivision, as he oversaw the Department of Resistance Control, and anything that required Peacekeepers to intervene posed as an incident of resistance. She had written thousands of reports on resistance incidents both large and small. Surprisingly, she’d never encountered one personally outside of today – and something about it shook her badly. She stared uselessly at her hands, and picked nervously at the chipped part of her nail.

What was wrong with her? Why was this incident so jarring?

The clock on the wall struck one. Mr. Wright’s door opened.

“Ms. Buddington, I would like the report on the recent incident by the end of the day.”

She swallowed and sat up straighter. “Would you like two separate reports on the individuals, or should I combine them into one?”

“One will be fine.” He frowned at her, like what she had said was rude. “Are you feeling well?”

 _Normalcy is accepted, placidity is preferred._ She fixed a placid smile on her face and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” He stepped backwards and shut his door, leaving the room to grow silent yet again.

Her moment of shock had passed. Madison opened the manila folder closest to her and turned toward her computer. There were only so many hours left in the day, after all. 

Mr. Wright never returned from his office, but her report was sitting neatly in her box for completed work by the time the clock struck four-thirty. She sat patiently, drumming her fingers lightly on the desk. Boredom was rarely a word in her vocabulary, but fatigue often was, and she wanted to enjoy the upcoming weekend.  _It could be worse_ ; her mother had reasoned early on in her career as Mr. Wright's secretary.  _You could be stuck working a job going nowhere, like so many. The Society choose you above all else because of your potential. You're just like John._  And then the conversation had ended there, since her mother had dissolved into quiet tears over her cup of tea. 

Madison's back ached from sitting upright. She wanted to get home and return to her book on European medieval life. Her father's pre-Society book cache was the only vice she would admit to having and it was mostly harmless; the most that the Society Peacekeepers would do if she was found would be to seize the books and burn them. She was rather attached to them, so she used the privacy of her apartment bathroom to read them in. As long as she was silent, no one could guess that what she was doing was technically illegal. Her brother would have scoffed at her tiny act of rebellion, but she knew he would have been proud deep down. 

Mr. Wright's door opened again, and the man smoothly locked it behind him. She stood and gathered her own belongings, pausing only when Mr. Wright scooped up her report and glanced over it. 

"Good. I'll add it to the larger report that's being presented to the Board on Tuesday." He glanced at her, and then tucked it away into his briefcase. "We'll resume Monday morning, as usual." His version of a goodbye was always startling to her, but she had learned not to allow her face to betray it. 

"Have a good weekend, sir," she replied. He stared at her face for half a second more, and then he was sweeping out of the office, already engrossed in something on his mobile phone. 

Madison did not drive, like most people in this city. It wasn't a matter of not affording one - she was well off thanks to Mr. Wright - but rather a matter of the usefulness of the public transportation system. The closest stop was a mere block from her apartment complex. The sun had set, and so she walked through the twilight toward the subway, ignoring the Peacekeepers stationed at every corner. She chalked the increase of security up to the incident this afternoon. 

The subway was notably deserted, with only a few stragglers like herself waiting on the next train. She frowned, feeling her confusion spread across her face. There was an unspoken rule about not speaking to your fellow members of society, but the lack of people was pressing enough that a man about her age sidled slowly over to her with a matching look of confusion on his face. 

"Excuse me, but do you happen to know why there's no one here?" She shook her head, reaching up to tuck that pesky stray hair behind her ear again. The man's frown deepened. "Does this seem unusual to you?"

"Yes, it does." 

"Should we be concerned?"

"There were an exorbitant number of Peacekeepers outside," Madison said before she could stop herself. Her mouth shut softly, but it was too late to take back her words. She just wanted to be home with her books. The strange man nodded. 

"I thought so myself-" But the second half of the man's sentence was drowned out by the roar of the subway train as it clattered to the station. She squared her shoulders and stepped closer to the tracks. Man, or no man, she'd be damned if she wasn't getting on this train to go home. An eerie silence spread over the terminal as it screamed to a stop and its doors slid open. She stepped onto it, glancing quickly to each side to scan the people on it. There was only an apparently asleep person in a black hoodie leaning against the window further up on the car. The seat in the back looked particularly inviting. The man from before thought so too it seemed, since he took one near her. 

The doors slid shut. 

The train began to move. 

Something was odd about the man way in the front. He wasn't leaning against the window anymore, nor was he even sitting. He had jumped to his feet the second the train started moving and was fiddling with the wall in front of him. The man sitting near her exchanged a confused look with her. 

Suddenly, the man in the front began to giggle sporadically. He stepped back from his handiwork and turned to look at them with a crazed grin. Madison recognized the resistance symbol he'd painted on the wall a second too late. 

"Get down!" She screamed, ducking her head as the first explosions wracked the cars in front of them. The train seemed to buck angrily, and Madison's world went black. 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo chapter 2 already!

The air was smoky and thick and Madison woke up coughing.

Someone had dragged her off the train, and her face was pressed against the cold tile of the floor. Her ears were still ringing from the blasts, but she could faintly make out voices somewhere above her. She didn’t get more than a second to process this before hands curled under her armpits and hauled her up to a standing position.

Pain shot through her head like a flash of lightning. Her vision swam, and she blinked to try and stabilize it.

“Survivor?”

“Yeah. Think she’s valuable?”

“Ain’t for me to decide, you know that.”

Someone spat on the ground next to her. “Go get’em then! Damn. She’s heavy.”

Madison tried to get her weight onto her feet, but her knees shook too much for it to matter much. Whoever was holding her groaned and shifted along with her, with his grip tightening in case she decided to drop. Sharp footsteps stopped short in front of her and a hand lifted her chin up.

Someone sucked in a sharp breath. Madison wondered vaguely if that was good or bad. “We take her.” It was an order, not a request.

The man holding her spat again. “You sure?”

“Look at her.” The man in front of her was suddenly angry. “Look at how she’s dressed. We’re taking her.”

She remembered the symbol on the train and a cold sense of fear dripped through her chest. These men had to be members of American Idiot, which meant she was dead. She weakly struggled, but the grip of whoever was holding her was firm. Her vision cleared a little and she lifted her head to see if she could recognize anyone. Mr. Wright had her update the Society’s Most Wanted monthly, so if there were any high-ranking members of American Idiot here, she’d be able to spot them.

No such luck. The people here looked to be barely out of high school. The only official-looking member must have been the man who had spoken about her, and he was too busy rounding up the others to even face her. She eyed him solemnly while trying to memorize anything she could from the limited perspective she had. A second later she almost laughed at herself for her foolishness: even if she did escape from American Idiot with her life, she’d just be put to death by the Society for having connections –albeit unwilling ones – to the biggest resistance group in America. She was dead regardless of what she did.

Madison sagged a little against the grip of the man holding her. American Idiot had already cost her family a child, and thanks to her insistence on taking the subway even though she could tell something was wrong had cost them another. A small voice in the back of her head wondered aloud if this was planned by the Society to take out undesirables. Was she an undesirable, or was she simply collateral damage?

The man from before turned to face them. He was clearly the oldest one here, with Madison guessing his age at about thirty-five or forty. He was skinny as a rail and his hair had been bleached blond and styled so it spiked up. His face was not unkind when it was neutral, but the syringe in his hand did not look kind in the slightest. She jerked away instinctively, but the grip of the man holding her was too strong against her heels sliding on the ground.

“Can’t you hold her still?” the older man complained. He pinched a bit of her neck and Madison attempted to scream for help despite her hoarse voice. “ _Christ_  she’s loud.”

The needle bit into her skin and the cold fluid seeped into her veins. Whatever the drug, its effects were nearly instantaneous, and her body began to go numb. She sagged and the older man grinned.

“Saint Jimmy’s gonna  _love_ this.”

* * *

 

The room she woke up in was dark and quiet. Madison stared at the dark and wondered if Mr. Wright had gotten wind of the attack yet. She feared her name was now among the list of the Missing/Presumed Rebel.

She sat up slowly and crawled until she hit a wall, and then she crawled around the border of her cell. And it was a cell; one of her walls was nothing but thick, cold bars. Her fingers felt out the groove where a door must have been.

_I am a prisoner for riding the subway_ , she thought with a humorless laugh. It echoed off the walls until it sounded like a chorus had joined around her. When nothing responded, she curled up in the middle of her cell and choked back the tears that were threatening to fall. 

The lights flickered on. 

Madison blinked, startled by the abrupt change. Quick, light footsteps with the accompanying sound of jingling keys was coming towards her from somewhere close by, but she couldn't tell from where. She slid back against the stone wall and hugged her knees to her chest, noticing faintly that her heels were gone. 

The older man from before walked into view. He grinned at her in what he thought must have been a friendly smile. Madison thought it looked like he was baring his teeth at her. "Good morning."

She stared at him. His smile dropped and he sighed. "You're never gonna get out of here if you don't talk. Bossman doesn't like mutes, you know." He spoke to her like he would to a child, and, despite her fear, it angered her. Mute resolution was the only response he received. 

"Look, Madi, I've got to take you in front of the bossman, and he's the one who isn't gonna be nice if you don't start answering his questions. If you start yapping now, I can get you cleaned up or whatever before we go." He peered at her hopefully, like the olive branch of a shower was going to sway her completely. Madison curled in tighter on herself, and he sighed. "Have it your way then. Just remember what I said about him not liking mutes." He unlocked her cell door, swung it open, and stared at her expectantly. "You don't eat until the bossman sees you." 

She was starving. He must have known that. After a terse minute of a staring contest between them, Madison broke her grip on her knees and got clumsily to get feet. The older man was grinning triumphantly again, and he held out a hand for her to take, which she ignored. He curled it around her upper arm instead. Thankfully, he didn't babble while they walked. 

They must have been deep underground, she mused, because every wall seemed to be carved out of dirt and slightly damp. Their base was surprisingly technologically advanced for a resistance group barely pulling enough people to survive.

Or so she thought.

The older man walked her by a room filled with hundreds of people. The sheer size of their numbers made her gasp and stop short. That room alone must have had more people than Mr. Wright's estimates for the entire organization. 

The older man huffed out a laugh. "More than your 'statistics' huh?" 

Dumbly, she nodded. 

The eventual room they settled at seemed to be a debriefing room. Numerous high-ranking officers were running around and vying for the attention of a solitary man sitting on a throne of some kind. She recognized most of them, but her breath caught in her throat when she saw the man on the throne properly. Short black hair, gaunt face, and a permanent scowl jutting across a thin mouth could only belong to St Jimmy, the leader of American Idiot. She’d seen his face too many times under the Public Enemy #1 title to ever forget a single detail.

It was like ice had been shot into her veins. She stilled, afraid, and the older man all but had to drag her until she was mere feet away from him. Her hands shook by her sides.

“Saint Jimmy,” the older man said, addressing him somewhat formally. “I present the woman we took from the subway bombing last night.”

St Jimmy turned his gaze upon her. It had gone silent around them. Madison refused to drop eye contact first, and she trembled from a mix of adrenaline and fear. Green eyes of the enemy glittered at her.

“Name?” He sounded almost bored with the situation.

She set her mouth into a hard line and shook her head. He barked out a laugh.

“Oh don’t play coy. You’re not living regardless of what you say or don’t say to us.” He leaned back in his throne and flung one leg over the arm of it, stretching black pants tightly against his crotch with the action. Madison felt her cheeks burn from the spike of embarrassment. His grin was positively wolfish. “C’mon, out with it. I don’t have forever. I kinda have an oppressive regime to overthrow.” The room laughed around them.

“Her name’s Madison Buddington. She works for Lucien Wright,” the older man supplied helpfully.

The look of playful antagonism vanished from St Jimmy’s eyes, and he got to his feet, stalking towards her to grab her chin and painfully force her face up to his. “You work for Lucien Wright.” It was framed as a question, but his intonation was deadly soft. His nails dug into the fleshy part of her cheek and she gasped. “You work for Lucien Wright.”

“You’re hurting me,” she choked out. St Jimmy shoved her back and she stumbled to the ground, landing awkwardly on her side.

He wasn’t a tall man, but when he loomed over her like this he seemed like he was violently desperate. “Do you know how many people –my brothers and sisters– that man has stolen from us?” he hissed at her. “How many deaths he ordered? How many innocent lives lost?!” He was screaming now, nearly frothing at the mouth.

Abruptly, he stilled and stared at her, eyes raking over her humble dress shirt and skirt. “Of course you do. You’re his secretary.”

Madison just nodded mutely, afraid that if she spoke he would fly into a rage again. St Jimmy turned to the older man. “She goes into the cells in my personal room. She’s the key to taking the bastard out.”

He nodded once, turned to her, and helped her to her feet. Madison wrapped her arms around her middle and bit her lip to keep from sobbing. St Jimmy resumed his lounging on the throne, attention already diverted to the next officer with something interesting to say. Hot tears spilled over her cheeks as the older man marched her out of the room.

 

 


End file.
